WipEout Pure Review (PSP)

Age rating: 3+

What is it?

Futuristic racing game with weapons

Is it fun?

Yes, it`s totally fantastic…but sometimes incredibly frustrating (usually directed at your own inadequate reactions)

Is it worth the money? £27.99

Yes, yes, yes!
That’s even before you take into consideration the free downloadable extra content! Yay :-)

Why?

WipEout Pure takes the best bits from the previous WipEout games, jazzes up the graphics, adds more weapons, more music, more speed and leaves you with a fantastic racing game for your PSP.

So what is WipEout then? Pure and simply it’s a racing game. However, it’s set firmly in the future and your ship “hovers” above the ground as you collect various power-ups and speed-boosts by flying over pads situated in the floors of the tracks. These power-ups include everything from missiles to blow your opponent away to energy packs with which to replenish your ship’s energy, which decreases every time you get blasted by an opposing craft or hit the track walls.

As you progress through the game, which consists of your standard tournament based racing structure (i.e. come top of the point table after 4 races); you unlock the faster speed settings. When you finally unlock the Phantom class of tracks you begin to experience just how awesomely fast WipEout can be. This is a quick game, make no bones about it, your refexes will be tested to, and usually beyond their limits. In this respect WipEout is a very unforgiving game. You make a mistake, take a corner too wide and hit the wall, you will be punished (you lose some energy and get overtaken). However, practice makes perfect, so put in the game time and WipEout Pure will reward you with some fantastic racing action.

Add in the single races, time trials, wonderful dance music and the quite mad Zone tracks (complete as many zones – each lap is made up of 5 zones – as possible in a continually accelerating ship, before it explodes as you have hit the track walls too many times!) and you have quite a game.

If all this wasn’t enough already you can go to WipEout Pure website and download lots of free content giving you 14 new tracks, 8 new teams and more music. Fantastic. Thank you Studio Liverpool.

Firmware version: Any (1.00 and above)

Links:

WipEoutPure.com

Screenshots: